In recent years, there has been a boom in the construction of networks using wireless LANs. Technical standards for interconnection of wireless LANs such as the IEEE802.11a, IEEE802.11b, and IEEE802.11g have successively been established. Manufacturers are now supplying products based on these. The fact that inexpensive, simple realization of wireless connection at practical speeds has become possible is spurring on the spread of these.
When building a network using wireless LANs, which standard to base the connections on is selected and an ID unique to the network, called a “SSID (Service Set Identifier)”, and information for encrypting the data, called a “WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) key”, are set.
Wireless LAN equipment of the same standards can of course by connected with each other, but there is no compatibility between the IEEE802.11a and IEEE802.11b or IEEE802.11g, so mutual communication is not possible. IEEE802.11g has a compatibility mode with the IEEE802.11b, but mutual communication is possible only in the compatibility mode.
If the SSID is not the same, equipment cannot be connected to the network.
The WEP key is used to encrypt the data transferred between terminals linked by the same SSID. By encrypting the data, it is possible to prevent the content of the data being transferred from being revealed despite connection itself being made. This is effective in terms of security, so setting a WEP key is recommended. As the length of the word used as the WEP key, 64 bits, 128 bits, 152 bits, etc. can be set. Further, as many as four keys may be stored. Unless even the information as to which number key to use is exactly the same, the encryption cannot be reversed in this system.
In this way, to connect wireless LAN equipment, various parameters must be made the same. For the method for changing these parameters, due to the fact that the connection is broken when the settings are changed, up until now one of the following methods has been used.
In a first method, the settings of the wireless LAN access point (called the “wireless LAN station”) are entered, then the settings of the client systems (personal computers) in the network are changed manually one system at a time. Note that a “wireless LAN access point” is provided with a wireless LAN interface and a wired LAN interface and provides a relay function for communication among wireless LAN terminals and a relay function for communication between a wireless LAN terminal and a wired LAN terminal.
In a second method, a client system starts up a setting software. When this happens, the settings of that client system and the settings of the access point are simultaneously changed. However, the settings of the other client systems are not synchronously changed, so those settings have to be changed manually.
Due to the large number of setting items, if manually setting all of the items of the wireless LAN equipment to be connected to the network, the setting operation would become tremendously troublesome. If it were possible to simultaneously set all of the client systems in a network, this setting work could be considerably reduced. At the present time, however, such technology has not been provided.
Note as a prior art document relating to settings of a wireless LAN, the following Patent Document 1 discloses the technique of enabling equipment not provided with abundant input interfaces to be connected to the wireless LAN by adding functions as an access point to the equipment to be added.
Further, the following Patent Document 2 discloses a wireless LAN using a frequency hopping type of a spread spectrum wireless transmission and reception system wherein resynchronization is performed swiftly and reliably when the frequency synchronization is lost once under frequency hopping control.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 2003-143156
Patent Document 2: Japanese Patent Publication (A) No. 8-181681